Thursday Thoughts

This is Singapore. A bustling metropolitan city, bright as a diamond when the sky grows dark, where you can walk the streets at 3am without fear of getting raped, where you can be guaranteed of a hot meal no matter the time of day, where you have no want of a roof over your head.

I can say all that, because I am privileged and fortunate to not be one of the lower rungs of society. It is true, there are others who feel frustrated and angry that the rich keep getting richer, and the poor keep getting poorer. I am not a millionaire, but at least I am not in debt, I can give some allowance to my parents and still eat well myself.

To say that Singapore is the perfect place to live in, no I wouldn't say that. Of course I have my own dissatisfactions with the way things are now. As part of the minority LGBT community, I do not have equal rights as my fellow Singaporeans. Because I cannot legally marry, foreigners are given precedence over me when it comes to public housing. Even though divorce statistics are on the rise, and more couples are not having babies, the government still holds fast to its "pro-family" stance. As if I do not consider my partner my family. If I were to fall sick, my partner would not have the rights to give permission for an emergency operation to be done, because she is not my family by right. If I were to die, my partner would not have the rights to keep what is ours, because she is not my family by right. What is not covered by rights, we will have to spend time and money at a lawfirm to legally protect ourselves.

But after all that is said and done, I believe with time will come change and acceptance. Therefore I seek that people do not oppose everything for the sake of opposing, but really strive to understand the problem and provide feasible solutions. As angry as I am about certain issues, the overall agenda that the current governemnt pushes may not be entirely bad. People fail to see the bigger picture sometimes. I like the ending of this article :

"When the elderly man who was sleeping in the train tunnel was asked why he didn’t have a home to go to, he said that when the government had proposed to build a nursing home next to where he had lived, he had petitioned against it." (People now are opposing the building of nursing homes in their neighbourhoods because they think that it will negatively impact their property prices.)

In the meantime, do not feel discouraged if you feel side-stepped as a minority. I love the annual Pinkdot events as it encompasses love and togetherness as a community, yes in Singapore! The turnout every year just grows by leaps and bounds, that is already saying something of our presence in this little dot. Do not turn suicidal if your parents reject you on the day you come out, because as this anecdote shows, all it takes is time and courage. Do not be angered by ignorance, the last thing you want is to be stereotyped yet again. Do not give up on yourself because society gave up on you, we now have so much to do to prove them wrong, and we will! It takes strength to be someone special, and that's exactly what we all are inside, SPECIAL.

Just give yourself time. Just give your fellow citizens time. Just give Singapore time. Everything will be OK.